Last night, a regular commenter in the Men’s Rights subreddit — inspired by a thread on 4chan — posted a link to an online form on r/mensrights under the headline “Feminists at Occidental College created an online form to anonymously report rape/sexual assault. You just fill out a form and the person is called into the office on a rape charge. The “victim” never has to prove anything or reveal their identity.”
This headline is not only inflammatory but untrue: Yes, Occidental College has an online form that allows victims of or witnesses to sexual assault to report the incidents to the school. But, as a statement at the top of the form makes clear, the point is to collect data on how much sexual violence there is at the school, who the victims are, and so on.
If the person reporting the crime names the alleged perpetrator,
a member of the Dean of Students Office will meet with that person to share that the person was named in an anonymous report, review the Sexual Misconduct Policy, and inform the person that if the allegations are true, the behavior needs to cease immediately. Information shared in this form alone will not result in anyone going through the grievance process.
I’ve put the last bit in bold to emphasize a point: No one will be charged with anything based only on information gathered using this form. As would be clear to anyone who thought about the matter for more than a few seconds, it’s rather difficult to investigate, much less prove, a rape if you don’t actually know who the victim is.
Somehow this rather elementary fact eluded the OP, and virtually all of those who left the hundreds of comments on the popular post.
Indeed, a host of Men’s Rights Redditors were so convinced of the innate evil of the online form they all had the same bright idea: let’s flood the school with false reports of rape and break the form. Here are some of their comments. (There are more in the thread.) Note the number of upvotes each of these suggestions got. (Click the images to see the comments in context on Reddit.)
While a few commenters stood up to point out that in fact the school will not charge anyone with anything as a result of anonymous information gathered by the form, they were outnumbered by Men’s Rightsers gleefully reporting that they in fact had reported false information. Among them:
![froggymorning 46 points 15 hours ago (59|13) I've already filled one out. permalink source parent save give gold hide child comments [–]Muffinizer1 6 points 7 hours ago (9|4) Was kind of fun. I swear to god though, if they track us down it would be terribly ironic, however it's mildly likely.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/froggy.png?resize=546%2C171&ssl=1)
It’s one thing to criticize an anonymous reporting system because of its potential for abuse; this is something else entirely.
The post has been up for 17 hours at this point, with more than 700 net upvotes, and some of the calls for “breaking” the form have been up for nearly as long. The moderators of Men’s Rights have done nothing to stop their subreddit being used to interfere with a school’s attempt to assist rape survivors — including men.
“Breaking” a school’s rape reporting mechanism is apparently a form of Men’s Rights activism.
I’m pretty much convinced that GWW uses long, obtuse formats (like webcam videos) to prevent anyone being able to easily quote her or respond to what she’s saying.
Golly, that’s quaint…nobody does that anymore.
Yes, they do.
“This is an unlawful assembly, you must disperse”.
They did it to Occuppy on the Brooklyn Bridge, They “kettled” them, told them they were unlawful and arrested them because they had no place to go.
Why are we constantly providing them moral permission and various options to not officially report, when victims not reporting results in more future victims?
Because of shit like this:
Makes me wonder what the “higher” numbers he doesn’t believe are.
I tried to comment and WP ate it, since glossary troll has me fuming, I’ll just retype this bit —
Don’t worry about it Kitteh, I figured you were poking fun at MRAs, not gaslighting (and I’m having a shit week)
“Makes me wonder what the “higher” numbers he doesn’t believe are.”
We’ve had MRAs saying 90%+ haven’t we? (Or am I getting confused because the opposite is true?)
A police officer with an MRAish attitude to numbers (and to women).
And they dare ask why rape isn’t reported more.
If I weren’t horribly sleep-deprived, I would have laughed out loud at this.
I am also sleep-deprived, and want to point out that the traditional MRA percentage is 99%. This dude hasn’t gotten the memo.
You can quote my poem anywhere. In case someone didn’t know, it’s ripped on the famous beginning of William Blake’s “The Tyger”:
Tyger, tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Apparently every line begins with a capital (just now checked). Also, perhaps the last line should be “Could match the fearful price you ‘got”. Some native speaker could consider optimizing word choices for dramatic effect. And maybe bastardize the whole poem…
Strewth, Arctic Ape, you did a better job of it than this native speaker ever could!
Auggz — that logic, cuz I’ve had my fair share of jerkbrain about it, goes like this — if the rapist is inclined to rape you, they might be inclined to rape someone else, if you get them put behind bars, then they can’t do that. Thus failure to get them sent to jail means not protecting their future victims.
Have fun parsing that onion of fail.
@kittehserf:
“A police officer with an MRAish attitude to numbers (and to women).
And they dare ask why rape isn’t reported more.”
This does seem to be quite a prevalent problem in many PDs here in the U.S., sadly. 🙁
Not just the US, either.
Johnathan Taylor is now saying that he never condoned any form of spamming. Thank you for the screenshots, David. I will surely rub his nose in his own doo-doo
@Kitteh: Yep, sad but true as well. 🙁
false accusations are only bad when females o it duh
just another way for these irrational men’s right activist to prove they have no intention in protecting men from actual issues. They simply wamt to stick it to women any way they can. This is also proven by the way they treat men who try to stand up for women. If a man says “don’t disrespect your ladies,” theses mra types demand his man card or throw a homophobic term.
Its obvious that false rape isn’t what they have issue with: they (most mra I’ve come across) seem to think one of two things 1. Rape is a myth or 2. Rape should be treated as a myth so no man is wrongly accused.
It makes me sick. I am glad I didn’t have a daughter to grow up with so much of this thought. I will teach my son to respect you ladies and stand against these cowards. With my wife being his mom, it should not be difficult.
Goodluck to all. Please remember that we are not all like this. Most men aren’t woman haters, just as most women are man-haters.
And they think women are illogical and react emotionally…
And no. I am not MRA or PUA.
No one cares, josorio, no one cares.
Cloudiah i had to be sure just in case someone screamed “misogyny!”
I wasn’t aware only MRAs and PUAs could be misogynistic.
MRA/FRA are all useless and failures of the human species. God/Goddesses help our future generations from these stun humans!